Recognizing that the past is nothing more than the stories we tell about it, Girty examines the myth of Simon Girty, the legendary “white savage” who terrorized the American western frontier during the American War for Independence and the Northwest Indian War. No serious book published since the nineteenth century has focused on this great villain of frontier mythology. While Daniel Boone and Simon Kenton were presented as great trailblazers and heroic Indian fighters, Simon Girty was demonized as a murderer and torturer of his fellow Americans. Stories are still written about the legendary frontier heroes, but now that the Indians have been exterminated or removed, the Girty myth is no longer useful. Girty’s true story is far more fascinating than his myth—a rarity in the literature of history, which is filled with more fiction than fact.
